The Infant Wails In Its Loneliness
by DoctorAuthor
Summary: Sherlock never thought to deduce Lestrade entirely or, at least, not out loud. Set after The Reichenbach Falls. Also on AO3.


Sherlock thinks that Lestrade is boring.

No, that's not right. Lestrade is one person he calls friend, and for what reason would Sherlock Holmes need a friend who bores him? There are two others after that, but they're not important in this story. Not really.

The DI is more clever than they think. Yes, Sherlock thinks, alone, he acts like an utter ignorant old man, but the detective believes he can be greater than that, and is. Sherlock simply doesn't have the time for less important things like that, though. So he leaves his friend's secrets alone for another day, or, possibly, to never be touched.

Lestrade finds out that it's the latter.

He saw the body, saw them cleaning up the sticky mess on the sidewalk. He saw it washed away by rain and civilians and tourists who forget so quickly; they wash it out of Sherlock's hair and fix him up and freeze him for another day. Lestrade watches on that day when it's invisible and lowered into the ground.

Lestrade knows that the detective will not be easily erased- not from his or anyone else's mind. He knows that John is as messy as the corpse bleeding out onto the street, he knows that Mrs. Hudson cries a little bit each night with no one to comfort her, and he knows that, besides them, no one else is hurting as hard as he is. John, of course, the most. Lesrade won't fight for that position. But still...he feels empty each night and turns his ex-wife away without a second thought. He doesn't want or need her body or her sympathy. What he wants is himself, at least for now.

He tries to visit Baker Street; he does so with no reason, and when questioned on his motives for showing up, Lestrade panics and asks John to be his doctor for any cases they have. Too soon, though, because John tightens up and says,"Maybe some other time." And when he thumps down the stairs again, balancing an elephant on his head, he can hear Mrs. Hudson. He leaves without saying hello.

Greg lies in his bed each night when time creates the impression of pausing. He's unable to sleep, unable to think of anything, save for everything he's ever seen moving around in his head because his mind won't shut off. His pet dog dead by a passing car years ago, his fifth birthday cake, and then Sherlock dead, the body, the body, no color but white and red like scarlet ink splattered over crisp paper. Lestrade had to be forcibly escorted away because he started breathing funny and swaying, and the paramedics had to force him to sit with his head down, holding a bucket; they told him he had gone all pale, no color anywhere, and didn't want him vomiting all over the scene. He doesn't remembering actually throwing up, but in moments of lucidity clouded by confusion and sorrow, his throat was stinging and there was a sour stench wafting from the dirty bucket that hadn't been dirty before. _No._ He doesn't want to think about that, but there's no way of stopping himself from being thrust into the scene over and over again. Maybe this is how Sherlock feels...

_Was._ It _was_ how Sherlock felt, if the bastard had ever felt at all.

Lestrade knows that he did.

His sometimes lover desists contacting him in any way, and he has the sinking feeling that it's all over the between them. The feeling doesn't sink as low as he thought it would. He's glad that he never had any children with her, or else this mess he's in would be too much for him to handle at one time. He's a bit empty, a bit sad, a bit angry, and hurting all over. Crime has been rougher and he's got plenty of nasty bruises and lacerations to prove that they need Sherlock Holmes. Too bad they can't have him. He hurts inside, too, as disgusting as it is to think about. No DI should be aware of that. They have to move on, though. That's the roll of the dice.

He can't, though. He's one of the chosen few who is sentenced to suffer and expected to go on while nobody sees and there are no words to describe it. That is the turmoil Lestrade finds himself in.

He goes on like this for three years.

How? He doesn't know and doesn't particularly care to know the answer. He does what he does and that's that. No need for explanation while people are dying and being robbed. But he sees a familiar blond head one day at work, coming towards his office, and he stands from his desk to greet it.

John steps into his office, and Lestrade notices that Scotland Yard is silent and staring. He's suspicious at once. "What? What is it?"

"Now, listen," John says quietly,"I don't want you to have a panic attack or something, but there's something-"

"What?" the DI gasps. "Why would I- John, what's-"

His office door opens. It seems as though John has a companion. He's tall, and Lestrade looks up to see his face clearly. His hair is long, curly, dark, bangs nearly covering gray eyes that stare straight into him, and his face is-

Oh.

_Oh._

Something pricks at Lestrade's eyes. He blinks them away, unable to allow this person's face to be blurred. He shakes his head, then looks back up.

Sherlock Holmes is still there, and all he can say to Lestrade is a clever,"I understand you have a case for me, Detective Inspector." Lestrade knees wobble and quake, and he has to sit and place his head between his knees. He nearly has a panic attack right there, and maybe he overreacts, but really. Sherlock is dead. He's _dead._ He repeats these words as he stands on shaking legs.

"So why the hell are you here!" he concludes, slamming a hand on his desk. Sherlock quirks an eyebrow. "Are you quite done?" he inquires. Lestrade breathes in and out before murmuring,"Yeah. Yeah, I'm- I'm done."

"Excellent. If you'd escort us, Detective Inspector."

Lestrade is brisk as he walks past the dead man.

It can't be him, really. Sherlock Holmes died. Lestrade saw the body, and the blood on the sidewalk that washed away from sight but never really left. He knows that John can see it, the blood on that street. Lestrade can see it, too. The DI must be thought a fool if they believe he'll go along with their prank. It isn't Sherlock. It isn't, it isn't, it isn't...

And yet it must be, because who else can call upon such an air of pompousness that circles him as he walks, speaks, gazes upon something? The skin is the same pale color, the eyes are the same shards of gray ice. He's still a lanky arse, too, bossing around Scotland Yard like he owns the place. It's silly- absurd- to think that this is not Sherlock Holmes, and merely an exact duplicate of him. Lestrade knows this.

He stills eyes the detective with wariness and never allows himself to fully believe it, until one fateful day when Mycroft is checking up on his younger brother. The older Holmes is acting as if his dear brother hasn't been dead, no, he's only been away on vacation, which is even stupider to believe than suspicious of a man whose funeral he attended. Holmes doesn't take holidays. The brothers are bantering, quick of wit and sharp of tongue, and Lestrade is gazing at Sherlock out of the corner of his eye, wondering if this is, indeed, Sherlock.

The younger sibling breaks off his conversation abruptly and turns on the DI, furious. "Stop it! Just shut up!" he snaps, muting many of the people at the crime scene. Lestrade straightens up, not one to take unjust accusations kindly. He demands,"I haven't said a word!"

"No, but you've been thinking loud enough for innocent families blocks away to hear you!" Sherlock insults, turning the rest of the heads around them. He has had enough. "Stop suspecting me of being a fraud and deal with it, Lestrade! That's what got me killed in the first place! I died, I'm back, its over! Case closed! Shut off your insolent little brain before you hurt yourself."

"Oi!" Lestrade barks. "If you haven't noticed, it's not exactly customary for dead people to pop out of their graves! Everyone here is skeptical, and they have a right to be! You just show up out of the blue after three years of being dead, Sherlock, _dead_, and you expect everyone to be fine with it! You could be a- a terrorist, or something! You don't even have evidence! Proof-"

"Proof?" the detective muses savagely. "You want proof that I'm the top-knotch detective you've known for so long? You want me to prove that I am who I am?"

"Yeah, I think we all do!"

Sherlock is already calm and launching off, searching Lestrade for secrets best left hidden. The DI feels like a taxidermy lion at a museum being studied by students. "Detective Inspector," Mycroft speaks up from behind his brother, already too late,"I don't believe that it's wise-"

"Your aunt was a junkie," Sherlock accuses before Mycroft can finish. Lestrade's eyes become sharp. "What did you say?" he challenges. He hadn't been expecting that.

"She had a girlfriend that she was going to marry one way or another, and you went to live with them after your parents got divorced and were settling things. They had a daughter, maybe from a donor, more likely adopted. She was...six- no, wait- two and a half months old. You were ten years."

"Alright," Lestrade whispers, eyes lowered,"we get it."

"You stayed with them longer than necessary because you loved them and your cousin and you loved being there where nobody fought or yelled or blamed you for everything." Sherlock's eyes see everything, and he can't be stopped, he can't be shut down; not even John is capable of stopping this car rolling down a steep hill, fated to crash. Lestrade knows this, but he pleads for him to stop anyway. Sherlock doesn't stop, only rolls off the information faster.

"Your aunt was going to propose when her girlfriend cheated on her with a man. They split and your aunt fell into a rut. She became an alcoholic, she wouldn't leave her room, and she did illegal drugs. She threatened or manipulated you into staying silent, and you had to make dinner and feed your cousin and skip school to take care of the both of them-"

"That's enough," Lestrade warns, dangerously close to snapping and lashing out, or something else of the sort.

"Sherlock-" John attempts.

"-and you would get hurt cooking often, or beat up at school for being so serious, and if you tried to tell your aunt she would yell at you to leave her alone, and there would be no one there to make you feel better because your parents were too proccupied living their own lives as if you never existed." The last word is hissed like a clipped curse, and something inside of the DI falls apart. It's all true.

"Your cousin now avoids you because you're so overprotective and won't let her live her life because you can still only see her as a vulnerable infant. But that's the reason you became part of Scotland Yard, isn't it?" The detective dares to have a ghost of a taunting smile flickering on his lips, even it's only for a moment. "Because of her, that's the only reason. She doesn't understand, that, though, so she keeps away, just like your parents did, and you think your cousin doesn't love you, and you think that your parents didn't love you because they didn't bother to even visit while you were living with your neglectful aunt and having to fend for yourself."

Lestrade has no words. His anger is gone, everything he can be feeling is gone. He is nothing but empty. He has been deduced, brutally.

This is most definitely Sherlock Holmes.

The detective steps away. "Is that proof enough for you?"

Sherlock becomes quiet once more and backs away into the silent cowd of Scotland Yard. He takes long strides as he leaves, leaving behind a shocked team of Scotland Yard officers and Mycroft, who shakes his head in a sort of apology before following, solemnly, with no intent on catching his brother until that evening.

The DI's breathing is heavy as he stares at his feet, which look very far away all of a sudden. His head swims. It takes him a minute to acknowledge that the silence smothering him should not be there, and he looks up and then around at the other people who work for Scotland Yard, Donovan and Anderson and the officials on the crime scene who are all staring at him as though he had grown second and third heads.

"Well?" he demands. "What are you all staring at? Get back to work, I'm not yer entertainment!"

They shuffle away back to their jobs. He gets at least two pitying glances from everyone that day and the next.

Lestrade gets a true apology the following day when Sherlock comes back with John. They stand alone, out of earshot, and the DI knows that it's the pressure of upsetting John, as well as Mycroft's intricate shaming that's making the detective do this, and not out of the pureness of his heart.

"I'd like to...apologize, Detective Inspector," he says, gazing out upon the field near the crime scene. "for embarrassing you yesterday. Pride is one thing I know well, and I seem to have...harmed yours. Your officers need to respect you, not pity you, and-"

"If you keep trying to apologize, I'm really not going to believe that you're Sherlock Holmes."

That makes Sherlock smirk. The DI is one of the few people who can do that. He and Lestrade stare out at the landscape, green and yellow, rugged and sloping, thoughts to themselves. They forget the crime scene for one moment, and Lestrade wonders to himself if he can consider the strange human a friend. He wonders if Sherlock considers him a friend. Lestrade doubts it, though realizes he wishes it to be so. Perhaps privately, to himself, he can categorize Sherlock as such. The greens of the hills blend together in this country crime scene, and if Greg shuts his eyes for just a moment-

"Did I miss anything?"

Lestrade's eyes open at once. He would have chuckled at the question. The detective did always have to be right...

Except Sherlock had missed something, something very important that sends sparks through the DI's spine and makes his legs wobble.

"Yeah. You did." Sherlock turns to him expectantly. "Well?" he prompts. Lestrade fights and wins over the urge to sigh, looks down at the grass beneath his feet, then back at the field and the rolling hills, at the drooping clouds above them that threaten to spill tears. His eyes turn melancholy.

"Maggie's dead."

Sherlock knows who Lestrade is talking about; his cousin, the infant dropped into his ten-year-old arms.

He knows that the taller man doesn't want to hear any of it, but he's never told anyone but the police, who sent him back to his parents. Then Greg was between homes, each one with an irritable adult who couldn't give one shit about their son. It was like Aunt Winona's house, except there was no more baby. "My aunt was high, drunk, everything at once all of the time. Nightmare for a little kid holding a baby with no clue on what to do. I didn't even know where babies came from, at that age." He tries to smile, tries very hard, but it falls into the grass and tumbles down the hills. Lestrade gathers himself before speaking again. "I was an easy target for her when she got in one of her moods, easy for her to take out her anger on me, easy for her to push me down the stairs. It wasn't as easy for her to realize I was holding Maggie."

Sherlock purses and unpurses his lips. He doesn't look at Lestrade, who has recounted the traumatizing event as though they are two elderly men with none else to speak of but the weather, or a tree bearing sweet peaches able to be knocked down with a clever cane. The detective nods. There are no words able to be spoken that aren't dangerously fragile, even between him and Lestrade as close as they are, for all of the years that they have known each other for.

They stand there with their eyes grazing the countryside until Lestrade is called back by his team. As he turns, Sherlock lays a hand on his shoulder. It's there and gone so fleetingly that the DI turns to see if it's true or merely hopeful hallucinations. He catches the sympathy- or is it empathy?- in the tall man's eyes. Greg allows himself a private smile.

For all that his aunt had destroyed, for all that his parents had sneered at and ignored him for, for all that the bullies at school had laughed at him for, Lestrade finds he has acquired a friend who amazes him far too much to linger on the past.

His name is Sherlock Holmes.

* * *

**A/N: I don't know if Lestrade has kids or not, so don't kill me if he does. I haven't seen any episodes in a while.**

**P.S. On the subject of Lestrade, I've gotta give some major props to the people who ship Mystrade. You guys ship two people who have never appeared in a single scene together in two seasons of an award-winning TV show. Good for you!**


End file.
